V. I.   Lenin

Original Postscript to the Pamphlet The Present Situation in the R.S.D.L.P.^[3]

Written: Written between August 20 and 24 (September 2 and 6), 1912
Published: Published for the first time. Published according to the manuscript.
Source: Lenin Collected Works, Progress Publishers, [1975], Moscow, Volume 18, pages 221-223.
Translated: Stepan Apresyan
Transcription\Markup: R. Cymbala
Public Domain: Lenin Internet Archive (2004). You may freely copy, distribute, display and perform this work; as well as make derivative and commercial works. Please credit “Marxists Internet Archive” as your source. • README

After the above lines had gone to press, we received Nevsky Golos No. 7, published in St. Petersburg on August 17, old style. Consequently, the liquidationist newspaper has resumed publication after an interruption of one and a half months. (The previous issue of this weekly—No. 6—appeared on July 5, old style.)

The information published in Nevsky Golos No. 7 provides the best confirmation of the appraisal of the actual significance of the liquidators in Russia which was given in our Central Committee’s letter to the Vorstand.^[1]

Indeed, early in July the paper suspended publication. Needless to say, the liquidators and their friends bent all their efforts to revive it. The results of their efforts during one and a half months (July and half August) are reported by Nevsky Golos itself (No. 7) as follows:

“This newspaper has received, for the replenishment of its funds:

July. From 14 persons, 25 rubles each (I. F., P., G., M. I., K., L., K. F., L., B., Vsh., Lv., Vl., V. P., B. of Moscow); through R., 50 rubles; from M —i, 11 rubles; Shkh., 11 rubles; from 8 persons, 10 rubles each (E., I., Is., S., Rf., Avg., Ob., P. 0.); from K. I., 8 rubles; from S., 7 rubles; from K., 5 rubles; B. B., 5 rubles; from F., 6 rubles; M. B., 5 rubles; from Lepaya 5 rubles; Gmp., 3 rubles. Total, 546 rubles.

“August. From Wulfsohn (Zurich), 10 rubles; also from him, 3.57 rubles; Benzia (Zurich), 15 rubles; G—ya (Kishinev), 20 rubles; Az—v (Astrakhan), 3 rubles; Sp—y (Bogorodsk), 15 rubles; V. V., 6 rubles; Y.Y.F., 59 rubles; from Dubbeln, through S., 20 rubles; from B., Moscow, 25 rubles; from Y. L., 10 rubles; L. L., 12 ru- bles; M. Gr., 3 rubles; from Moscow init. group, 35 ru- bles; B. B., 5 rubles; B., 5 rubles; from An. Konst., St. Petersb., through L. L., 6 rubles; from a group of friends in Paris, 8.54 rubles; from B., Paviograd, 20 rubles. Total, 281.11 rubles.”

Such is the account published by the liquidators themselves. Their work and their links with the masses during the one and a half months present the following picture:

Collected in all .   .   .   .   .   .   .   . 827.11 rubles

Everyone knows, as Plekhanov stated in print (Dnevnik Sotsial-Demokrata No. 16) as far back as April 1912, that the “initiating groups” are groups of liquidators.

And so, the liquidators were helped, at the most trying moment, when their paper had suspended publication, by:

one group of liquidators in Russia

one group of friends in Paris

35 well-to-do persons, each of whom contributed an average of 20 rubles (over 40 marks each)

15 private individuals, each of whom contributed an average of 5 rubles (over 10 marks each).

Was not our Central Committee justified in asserting that the liquidators in the Russian working-class movement were of no account at all?

The liquidators refer to the “Caucasian Regional Committee”. Not a single workers’ group in the Caucasus has sent   them a single contribution during those one and a half months.

The liquidators would like to have the help of the Bund and the Lettish Social-Democratic organisation. Not a single workers’ group, either in the Bund or among the Letts, has sent them a single contribution during one and a half months.

During the same period (July to August 14) Pravda, the St. Petersburg daily newspaper of the anti-liquidators, published accounts of 41 group collections by workers in various parts of Russia, including oil-field workers (Grozny fields, Terek Region) (Pravda No. 60) and Jewish workers in Lepaya (Pravda No. 67). We venture to think that this aid from workers means more than all the talk and declamation of the “Caucasian Regional Committee”, the Letts and the Bund.

No aid in the world, and no “conferences” with the Letts, the Bund, etc., can transform the liquidationist nothing in the Russian working-class movement into a something.

Let the German comrades undertake the not too arduous task of collecting the documents on the position of the R.S.D.L.P. and verifying them—after all, Russia is not Central Africa, about which any kind of “tall stories” can be told. The German comrades probably want to end this strange, gelinde gesagt,^[2] situation in which they get their information on the Italian, Swedish and any other socialist movement from openly published documents, while their information on the Russian socialist movement is obtained from privately communicated fables and gossip.

Notes

[1] Executive Committee of the Social-Democratic Party of Germany.—Ed.

[2] To put it mildly—Ed.

[3] The manuscript bears no title; the title given here has been supplied by the Institute of Marxism-Leninism under the C. C. of the C.P.S.U.